Rapid Shift

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By Julia Conley on Common Dreams Feb 2018 Bottled water companies have relied on predatory marketing practices and exorbitant lobbying efforts to sell Americans on the inaccurate belief that pre-packaged water is cleaner and safer than tap water—a notion that is costing U.S. households about $16 billion per year. In a new report entitled “Take Back the Tap,” Food & Water Watch explains that 64 percent …

Clean Technica 6 Feb 2018 The US Department of Energy is out with an interesting piece on wave energy that puts a new twist on the “American Energy Dominance” theme. In a recent interview, the folks over at the agency’s Water Power Technologies Office teased out a revelation that the waves off the Oregon coast have about double the energy …

New York Times, By Hiroko Tabuchi et al., 6 Feb 2018 Anchored in flood-prone areas in every American state are more than 2,500 sites that handle toxic chemicals, a New York Times analysis of federal floodplain and industrial data shows. About 1,400 are located in areas at highest risk of flooding. As flood danger grows — the consequence of a …

By Susan Cosier On EcoWatch Natural Resources Defense Council Jan. 30, 2018 Upper Peninsula Michigan, Lake Superior. As Mark Mattson waited to speak to Canada’s minister for the environment, Catherine McKenna, about the Great Lakes last December, he could feel the weight of the 184-page report he carried in his shoulder bag. At the Toronto meeting, McKenna asked Mattson, founder and president of the …

BY JOSH COHEN | JANUARY 22, 2018 in Next City A concept rendering of the future Ohio River Greenway. (Courtesy River Heritage Conservancy) Right now, the Ohio River Greenway consists of a few disjointed sections of multi-use trail along the bank of the Ohio River in southern Indiana, across the water from Louisville, Kentucky. When it’s completed this summer, the 7-mile greenway will connect …

At Smithsonian.com Could Giant “Solar Rigs” Floating On the Ocean Convert Seawater To Hydrogen Fuel? Scientists at Columbia University have designed a device that could make the process economically viable (Courtesy Flickr user Austin Valley) By Randy Rieland SMITHSONIAN.COM JANUARY 11, 2018 Usually, when we think about energy production at sea, we imagine giant oil rigs, or perhaps rows of towering wind turbines. Recently, though, …

About 40 percent of the world’s food depends on irrigation, which draws largely from stores of underground water, called aquifers, which make up 30 percent of the world’s freshwater. Unfortunately, groundwater is being rapidly depleted worldwide. In the United States, the Ogallala Aquifer—one of the world’s largest underground bodies of water—spans eight states in the High Plains and supplies almost …

A map depicting the total millions of pounds of toxic chemicals released into the environment by state in 2016. Darker colors indicate a higher volume of toxins. (Source: Ode to Clean) Editor’s Note: Solugen, founded in 2016, is a biotech company concerned with developing environmentally conscious alternatives to chemical manufacturing. Their first patent is called Bioperoxide—a hydrogen peroxide alternative created …

By Catherine Benson Wahlén, Human Development, Human Settlements and Sustainable Development (US), 28 Sep 2017, World Bank Report Warns of “Learning Crisis” The World Bank’s World Development Report 2018 finds that millions of children, particularly in low and middle-income countries, attend school but do not achieve proficiency in reading, writing and doing math. At the same time, the report stresses that, …

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the 7.9 million acres burned so far this year nationwide exceed the 2006-16 average by more than 50 percent. California, Oregon, and, especially Montana have the most wildfires, with Montana alone having 23 separate large wildfires. Abnormally dry and hot conditions in that state, documented by the September 5th Western regional Drought Monitor produced by the U.S. …